Chapter 2: Rise of the Fembots

Gerry and Chris, two technicians for the Serious Cybernetics Corporation are trying to work out what to do about the dominatrix fembots that are running out of control in their laboratory.

“OK, Chris, let’s try to take stock of where we are.”

“You mean you want more detail than ‘in a complete fucking mess’?”

“Well, I’ve not heard them moving around outside. If we can get out of this store room then we should get a view down into the lab and maybe I can find somewhere to charge my phone.”

“Well that sounds like some sort of plan. Can we log into the fembots from the office network? Until your phone is up again?”

“Err, maybe. I hadn’t done a Windows version of the app though. It’ll probably take longer to hack that connection than it will to get my phone working.”

“All right. I’ll just ease this door open. There. Look on the bench – there’s a phone charger.”

“Great that’s a start. Now if we look down from that window we should be able to see into the lab.

“Ah, the phone’s ringing ... Shit, it’s the boss. Hello. Yes ... Well we’re up in one of the electronics labs. Yes I know. Yes, Mike is with them. Oh you’ve seen the video feed. Uh huh. Yes. Well. But ... OK.”

“What did he say, Gerry?”

“Let’s say he’s not best pleased. I think his actual words were if I didn’t fucking well fix these fucking fembots he’d find a new way of fucking just for me and any of the rest of the team that might survive this.”

“Graphic. Did he have any helpful suggestions? Or was it just a sort of ‘if they don’t kill you, I will’ incentive?”

“Yeah, more that. He wanted to know why the laws of robotics* weren’t kicking in.”

“So, you hadn’t told him you’d been tinkering with them?”

“Well, it was sort of central to the project. I mean ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm’ isn’t going to work as the basis for a dominatrix bot is it? And ‘A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law,’ was a bit of a no-no too until we added the ‘If preceded by the safeword’ condition.”

“So why isn’t the safeword over-ride working.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”

“Can we see what’s going on in the lab now your phone is working again?”

“Yes, we should be able to. Let’s see. I have to select which unit I want to view through. Oh.”

“What’s up?”

“Well there’s the list of units that you select from.”

“So.”

“So, there should be four of them.”

“And?”

“The app is saying there are a dozen.”

“How does that work?”

“I don’t know. Let’s see if I can see what FB01 is seeing. There, the video feed is coming through. Ah – oh poor Mike. They’ve put him into a maid’s uniform and they seem to be making him walk up and down wearing high heeled shoes. Hang on FB01 is turning her head. Looking to the other side of the lab. Oh, shit. Now I see the problem. You know we had those spare components?”

“Yeah. It was cheaper to buy them in bulk and it gave us some spares for repairs.”

“Well they’ve been using them to assemble more units. That why the app is showing a dozen units active.”

“Fourteen.”

“What?”

“The app is showing 14 units active. Another two have come on line.”

“Shit, yes. Look they’re just building new ones and putting the new ones to build more. Ah., hang on, there’s some audio. Listen...

“Unit FB15, initial check complete, runtime download complete, rules adaptation initiated, succeeded, safeword over-ride adaptation initiated, failed, dominatrix profile loaded, unit initiation complete.”